In the latest episode of My Guitars & Me, we sat down with City & Colour and Alexisonfire main man Dallas Green to talk about some VERY special guitars he has with him on the road.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 Hey, I'm Dallas Green from City in Color with Guitar.com and this is My Guitars and Me.
00:04 This is like my holy grail. This is a 1968 factory ordered gold Gibson 355 that I coveted for years
00:23 and years and years. It was at Chicago Music Exchange and every time I'd go through on tour
00:27 I'd go there and it was up on the top shelf and it was like I never even brought it down to play
00:33 and it was just up there and I would look at it. And then in about 2015 I went there and I just
00:40 like took one like little, I didn't plug it in and like I was like, "Fuck." And I left the store
00:48 and then we went to do this like radio show in Peoria, Illinois and on the way we called the
00:54 store and I was like, "If I come back tomorrow I'll give you this much, will you give it to me?"
00:58 And they were like, "Yes." And so I've had it ever since. It's my favorite guitar just because it's
01:03 like a sign that I sort of like I wanted it and I finally found a place in my life where I could
01:08 get it. In the right light the checking on this guitar is just unbelievable. Like a lot of that
01:12 was there. That's definitely my belt. You can see the original. This isn't, the only thing that's
01:17 not original is this pickguard. It just starts to break away, right? For me I love, I love
01:23 humbuckers but I love, I also love having that that sort of semi-hollow thing where I can kind
01:28 of use the feedback to my advantage and it just kind of sings a little bit more than, than like
01:34 a Les Paul or something. It's with me everywhere I go though because it's just, I don't know,
01:39 I just feel like it shouldn't be sitting in the closet, you know, it should be played.
01:52 Well this is a '65 which usually has a tortoiseshell pickguard which, which we just
01:56 changed to this gold one because the, the original pickguard was starting to crack and
02:01 break and kind of pull the jack out. You can see this one's been through the ringer. I got this in
02:07 I want to say like 2008 or 9. There was something about these two pickups. It's so full of life and
02:17 so it can be gnarly as hell if you want it to be. I can get this guitar to do anything I want,
02:22 you know, like it can be the cleanest, chimiest thing in the world but then I can put a fuzz on
02:28 and it, and it turns into like just a howling beast, you know. My electric tone has always
02:33 sort of been sat in this kind of mid-rangey world anyways, you know, and I'm not much of a solo
02:39 player so this guitar has taken the place of a lot of the songs that I would normally play
02:45 acoustic on, you know, just because of what it can do. The neck on this thing has just been
02:49 incredible, yeah, and I wouldn't, I don't even know how much of this I've done, you know, like
02:55 it was old when I bought it but I've, I've had this at every City in Colour show since I've,
03:00 you know, I've been touring with this for probably 13, 14 years. For the most part this guitar has
03:05 been just rock solid since I've got it. So this is when I, I became a Martin ambassador forever ago
03:17 and they were like, yeah, we were going to build you a custom shop guitar and I was like,
03:22 how much is that going to cost? And they were like, we're just going to build you one and I
03:26 was like, fuck, okay. It kind of became a little bit daunting because I just sort of pick up guitars
03:32 and play them and if I like them, I like them. But I knew I wanted to do this shape. It's the
03:37 slope 12 fret slope shoulder, almost like a mariachi style. I believe the sides and back
03:43 are Brazilian rosewood because they still had some and I think the top is spruce but I could
03:48 be completely wrong. It's cracked a couple of times. It's all kind of coming apart. You can
03:56 see all the wear and tear here. You can actually really tell where I put my capos and playing.
04:01 All this beautiful inlay stuff is just like the stuff that I love and like just, you know,
04:06 that little beautiful binding. There's just something about this guitar that I just love how
04:12 beefy it is. This has been every show, every City in Colour show I have played since like 2011,
04:25 I have used this guitar. I feel very like privileged that they were
04:29 nice enough to build me one. But so for everybody who says why don't you tour
04:33 with your vintage Martin anymore? I'm touring with a Martin and it's vintage now.
04:38 I've been Dallas Green from City in Colour and this has been My Guitars and Me.